


The Beginning of the End

by gypsyweaver



Series: A Tale of Crowns and Coins [13]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Ineffable Bureaucracy, Non-Binary Pollution, Other, Pining, The Ineffable Plan (Good Omens), They/Them Pronouns for Beelzebub (Good Omens), They/Them Pronouns for Pollution (Good Omens), non-binary Beelzebub
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:08:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24166366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gypsyweaver/pseuds/gypsyweaver
Summary: Gabriel considers the beginning of his feelings for Beelzebub at the very end of all things.
Relationships: Beelzebub/Gabriel (Good Omens), Pestilence/Pollution (Good Omens)
Series: A Tale of Crowns and Coins [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1684990
Comments: 7
Kudos: 19





	The Beginning of the End

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PancakesForAll](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PancakesForAll/gifts).



> CW: Actually, this chapter is pretty soft. Let me know if I should have warned about something.

The touch of Beelzebub’s hand was a gentle comfort. Gabriel remembered the first time that their hand had fallen on his, though he doubted that they did.

It was during the planning phases of the Egyptian plagues. An absolute logistical nightmare, involving several angels and demons working collaboratively to pull it off. They’d just had a quick meeting with Nuriel and Sandalphon to finalize their part in everything. Looking back, he could see the way that Sandalphon’s eyes traced the lines and curves of the little Prince’s body. He could see the queer mix of repulsion and something else in Sandalphon’s dark eyes. A longing that Gabriel would have recognized, easily, on a human’s face. Lust.

Nuriel’s own face was cold, placid. She was the angel of ice and hail--Uriel’s twin--and though they looked nothing alike, their personalities were carved from the same block of frozen marble. She only addressed Gabriel, and did not even spare a look at the Lord of the Flies.

At the time, there had been pleasantries and plans. Gabriel hadn’t noticed Sandalphon’s lechery. If Beelzebub had, they kept it to themself. He and Prince Beelzebub sat on one side of the planning table, and Sandalphon and Nuriel on the other, discussing the storm of fire and ice that was supposed to take place. The when and the how. Logistics and style.

Afterwards, once everything was sorted and Sandalphon had escorted Nuriel back to Heaven, it was just the two of them. Beelzebub did not move from his side--did not move to the other side of the table, but worked at his elbow.

He would never admit it then, but he did not like working with the little Prince on opposite sides of a war table. Even in ancient Egypt, even before he gave a name to his longings, he wanted them by his side.

The oil lamps burned as the night wore on. The full moon passed above them and hovered above the horizon in the east. They both poured over maps and made last minute plans and adjustments.

Beelzebub had been eating through the meeting, a habit that annoyed Gabriel before he understood that the demon required food. Before he saw how ill they got when they went without. They weren’t messy about it. A loaf of bread sat in front of them, with a small dish of oil and herbs. They kept a wineskin, but it contained boiled water and slices of sour orange. They’d finished the cheeses and melon squares that they’d brought. They’d offered to share, and Gabriel had demurred. Though the smell was delicious, he refused to eat anything that was intended for the humans.

The smell annoyed him, and the sounds of chewing and swallowing. Mostly, he was annoyed because he assumed that the demon was doing this on purpose. Showing off that they could eat when he could not.

The final arrangements were made, and they both signed the last agreements. Pacts sealed, promises made, plans double and triple checked.

Gabriel was scribbling the last of his notes and Beelzebub was reading the same scroll (for what Gabriel estimated was the fiftieth time.) It suddenly occurred to him that they did not look well, dark blue half-moons under their eyes and lank black hair falling in their face. They’d stopped brushing it away, and instead, leaned hard on their fist as they attempted to read through their hair, in the fitful light of the lanterns.

The scritch of Gabriel’s quill was the only sound. The silence was nearly companionable. Not something that he got from any other demon. He could not admit to himself that he liked Prince Beelzebub, not quite yet, and he certainly didn’t trust any demon. But this was a demon that Gabriel thought he could work with.

A relief, after his other meetings with the Princes of Hell.

He wasn’t paying attention to the Prince, just wrapping up his notes and putting a few more lines on his report to the Metatron. He heard them finish their bread, and put away the oil and herbs. A few more moments passed. He could hear wild dogs not far from where they worked, barely within sight of the human city. The morning star lingered on the horizon. Daybreak was near. His time. Just as the horizon began to glow blue in anticipation of the morning, Beelzebub’s hand fell on his.

It startled him, the sudden fall of strange flesh on his own. He thought they must have needed his attention for something, but no. Gabriel looked down at the slender fingers, following them up to the tapered wrist, then the slim arm up to the mop of hair that puddled around the sleeping demon’s head and puffed out with their breath.

At first, he was concerned. He didn’t know if they were hurt, somehow. He didn’t see any blood. There was no sign that the little demon was in distress. Besides which, they were a healer. If something had gone wrong, surely they could fix it.

Then he’d gotten cross. He’d thought it was a temptation of some kind. Gabriel was not often touched, and the skin of the demon woke something within him. Something he still had not named, and did not like to think about.

Though still bigger than most humans, Beelzebub was so tiny compared to himself and the other angels and demons. Their hand had the weight of a songbird. Laying across his own, inviting his touch. Something so small, and yet, this was the hand of the one so dangerous that Lucifer chose them as his second-in-command. This was the hand that had defeated Michael--once in the Garden, and again in the War. Such a fragile little thing. Surely, he could crush it in his own.

He did not want to. He had no ill-will against this demon. He never had any ill-will against this demon. The realization was startling.

He thought it might be a temptation. How could they tempt him with a touch? With their very existence?

Gabriel wasn’t sure of the protocols around direct contact with the demons, but he remembered this one from their angel days. They were fierce, and he thought it best to not provoke them. He watched as they curled their fingers around his knuckles.

It was then that he realized that Beelzebub was completely asleep. That annoyed him as well. They were slacking off, typical lazy demon.

Now he knew better, that Falling had damaged their corporation and it required food and sleep to function. He did not know that, in ancient Egypt. He didn’t know that they’d exhausted themself trying to keep up with him. That this was their corporation finally giving up, giving out, making its demands upon them and refusing to continue working. He saw laziness--and yet...

Yet, he could not hate them for it. In their sleep, they’d reached out for him. In their unguarded moments, in their most fragile and helpless time, they’d reached for him.

So, Gabriel did not refuse their touch. He did not wake them. He finished his notes and his report. He watched the sun rise, and the sands of Egypt begin to warm. He ran his thumb along the curve of their pinky finger. Over and over. He wanted to memorize that small part of them, the feel of skin and flesh and bone beneath.

If this was all he would ever have of them, he planned to keep it.

The sun melted the fog that settled over the Nile Delta, and he knew there would be eyes on him. Gabriel drew his hand away, slowly. They clung tighter at first, but he slipped out from under them. Their arm retreated, to cushion their face against the table.

He cleared his throat, and the demon opened their eyes. In spite of how the Fall ravaged their body, rendering them skinny when they used to be a robust cherub, those eyes were untouched. They were the same crystal blue as the empty morning sky, fringed with thick, black eyelashes. Their expression was guileless, as innocent as a child.

He did not remember, but he thought they must have apologized for dozing, before they each gathered their things, nodded to each other, and said goodbye.

The second time that he’d held their hand, it was the only thing that kept him tethered to the Earth. On a small black sand beach in the middle of the Pacific, after he’d eaten for the first time. After all of the disappointments surrounding the Apocalypse, and the subsequent trials of the traitors, he was just weary and bereft. He asked for a meeting, to touch base, to find out what Hell was doing, to just get out of Heaven--which was nothing but a ball of frenetic and useless energy. They sent him coordinates, and he’d shown up.

It turned out to be a nameless island in the Pacific. They were easy to find. He stepped off of the observation deck and caught the wind in his wings. There was one bright light in the dark of the night. Gabriel followed the light, which turned out to be their driftwood fire, down to the black sand of the beach. They looked up at him, and smiled.

In the moonlight, they were so lovely. They’d dispensed of their shoes, socks (in as much as one could call those netted things socks) rolled up and pushed inside the shoes. Their jacket and war regalia rolled up beside their shoes. The hat, he’d eventually learn, was forced on them by Lucifer as part of their uniform, and dispensed with as soon as he was gone. The boils and attendant swarm of flies never showed up on Earth. They would tell him, later, that those boils were caused by an allergy to a mold that grew all over Hell.

White sleeves rolled up, and pinstriped trouser cuffs rolled up, Beelzebub sat on a dark blanket, forearms on knees, watching the waves. They held an amber glass bottle, which they offered him immediately.

He waved them off, and sat beside them. There was talk, about Beelzebub’s promotion, and the projects that Hell was greenlighting. The fact that the demons were just...moving on. Gabriel revealed that Heaven was having an existential crisis, and Beelzebub was sympathetic.

Through the whole conversation, they boiled crabs. Over their little driftwood fire, they kept a small cauldron boiling. They added vegetables and herbs (and mead) as necessary, and used a miracle to pull the crabs up to them. Perhaps it was the smell, or just the way that they sucked the meat from their fingers--maybe it was the glisten of butter, or just a deep need to test his own boundaries (and God’s), he asked to try a bite.

They looked startled, eyes wide and mouth open slightly. The surprise faded, and they smiled. A genuine, beautiful smile, and pulled out a joint of leg and handed it to him.

Gabriel had never known anything so delicious. At least, until they handed him the bottle of mead. Many crabs and many bottles of mead later, he was lying beside them, on the blanket. The driftwood fire was dying, and they were both watching the stars.

“Look,” Beelzebub had said, voice soft and sleepy with alcohol, “Cygnus. That’s yours, isn’t it?”

“So they say,” Gabriel replied. He hadn’t been formally assigned a constellation, but the humans tended to associate him with that one. “Do you have one?”

“No,” they said. “But I like Cygnus.”

He’d smiled in the dark over that. Head swimming from the mead, from the proximity. He looked over at them. Beelzebub had turned to face him and curled on their side, their eyelids heavy with the drink and the night chill. He watched them as they fell asleep, pleased that they felt comfortable enough to do so.

He did not know that they could not help it, that the night chill took their consciousness.

When their eyes closed, both of their hands found his. They were so cold, those little hands. Beelzebub shivered in the dark.

Still drunk, he’d pulled them into his arms, drew his wings out of the other realm, and wrapped them around. A blanket of feathers, blood, and bone. Gabriel felt them relax into him. The small heat of them, the life, it gave him something to hold onto.

Something sweeter than duty. Something more present than God.

If he was Falling, he barely felt it. How could the warm weight of another being, a demon besides, mean more to him than the love of God?

His enemy that he never hated, that he would have smote from the Earth rather than allow Sandalphon to touch, that was the most constant and tangible presence in his existence these last six millennia--he realized that he cared for them. Beelzebub shuddered in their sleep. Their body tensed, and though Gabriel had never experienced them himself, he knew they were trapped in a nightmare.

Gabriel wanted to shield them, to protect them. From the cold, yes. But from whatever darkness caused them to tense in their sleep, to clutch at his clothes and whimper. Because, when they were unguarded, they reached for him. They held his hand.

He ran his hand through their hair until their body relaxed. Until whatever troubled their sleep fled from them. Beelzebub’s white-knuckled grip on Gabriel’s shirt eased. They breathed rhythmically. He could not see their face, but he could feel the way that the tension fled their corporation. The way that they sank into him.

If he could have stayed there, on that beach, holding them forever, he would have. But the sun rose eventually, and Beelzebub had stirred. In the sudden shyness of morning, they both blamed the alcohol.

But, in that soft pink light, Beelzebub admitted that Lucifer was gone. Gabriel would never be a demon, no matter how many rules he broke. But neither would any other angel.

And then, when Beelzebub left that beach, they took him with. Promising to show him the world that he was supposed to help destroy.

And they did. One place at a time. Amusement parks and archeological sites. The Grand Canyon and a monster truck rally. The beauty of Budapest and Paris. Springtime among the cherry blossoms in Japan. A cheese festival in the States. The magnificent buildings in Mogadishu. The crumbling ruins of Rome and the caged libraries in Vatican City. White sand beaches, and golden sand beaches. Festivale in Rio. Forests of ancient trees and modern buildings of glass and steel. Museums and libraries. Ancient temples in Sumeria, dedicated to Ishtar.

Food and drink and art and music and glory. Every beauty of the world.

And at all times, he had their gentle presence, never tiring of his questions and never making him feel stupid. Leading him through the crowds and smiling as he picked up modern dialects of the ancient tongues that he knew.

Often, they stopped to heal people. Always at a distance, never seen.

“I cannot afford to be noticed,” they’d told him.

Gabriel never once wondered who might be keeping tabs on Beelzebub. Even now, he wasn’t certain if they feared Sandalphon, God, Lucifer, Israfil, or some unholy combination. Perhaps some other nemesis that they had not yet divulged?

He was a dreadful protector. He wasn’t even particularly effective as a visual deterrent.

And yet, they had his hand, and he had theirs. They walked out of Beelzebub’s home together, to meet the two who waited outside.

He watched Pestilence dismount his motorcycle, and help Pollution out of the sidecar.

“Pezztilence,” Beelzebub buzzed. “Well-met.”

“Beelzebub,” he replied.

“And you,” Beelzebub said, crisply, to Pollution. “Don’t kill anything here. You like your coffee made with unfiltered river water. I remember.”

“Alright,” Pollution said, with a shrug.

Gabriel grinned because he did not like these people, but they were here and he was here, and he couldn’t do anything about any of those things.

Pollution looked down at their phone. “Message from War,” they said, their voice fairly sparkling. “She says she’ll see us soon.”

“Yeah, she used the group chat,” Pestilence murmured, staring down at his sleek, white phone. He was texting. “I already sent them a message to say it would be New Orleans. Now that I have more precise coordinates...done.”

“Your ride starts here?” Beelzebub asked.

“You already know where I’m going,” Pestilence replied. “Don’t you?”

“I have a theory,” the demon acquiesced.

“Wait,” Pestilence blurted. His face went soft suddenly, and the steps he took towards Beelzebub were hesitant. Gabriel went to stand between them, but Beelzebub’s hand on his arm stopped him. “You’re...” he reached his hand out and touched the demon, laying his hand flat on their abdomen. His mouth was open and slightly smiling. “You’re with child?” he asked.

They nodded. “Yes.”

Pestilence looked up at Gabriel. “You work fast,” he laughed. “They weren’t pregnant the last time I saw them.”

“It’s not his,” Beelzebub said, laying their own hand over Pestilence’s. “I have trapped Israfil inside my flesh.”

Gabriel watched realization bloom across Pestilence’s features. “The last healer amongst the angels...”

Beelzebub held a finger up, “Almost. Hang on.”

They pulled out their own cell phone, a black one in a silicone (Gabriel assumed) case that fairly purred when Beelzebub handled it. They typed out a quick message, and sent it.

“Now, there are no more healers in Heaven,” they said. “You’ll need a lift?”

“I’d appreciate it,” Pestilence said.

“And you...Heaven is sterile,” Beelzebub said. “I think it might harm you. You are welcome in my home as long as you promise not to poison me or my things.”

“Is he yours?” they asked, looking at Gabriel in a way that made him very uncomfortable.

God must have made all the small ones the most dangerous.

“He’s mine,” Beelzebub agreed. “You can stay here, or you can wander.”

“Is that a house party I hear?”

“Yeah, the house in the center of the block is an Air BnB,” Beelzebub said. “They’re not going to let a plague ruin their vacation.”

“That’s where I’ll be,” Pollution said, folding their arms and fixing Pestilence in a pout. “It’s never as much fun alone.”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Pestilence said. His hand was running, possibly of its own accord, over Beelzebub’s belly. They did not stop him. “What’s this lift to Heaven going to cost me?”

“You are not to touch Gabriel, nor the Principality Aziraphale.”

“Once I unleash this, I’m not responsible for the spread,” he said.

“I know,” Beelzebub caught his hand and held it. “I don’t think you want me to lose this baby, so you won’t be giving me your disease, either.”

“Of course not,” Pestilence agreed.

“Also, I need two more coins. I used the last ones.”

“On what?” Pestilence asked, surprised. “Subway fare?”

“On Sandalphon and Nuriel. We were attacked.”

Their voice was as fragile as moth’s wings. Pestilence’s face grew stern.

“Are you alright?”

“Yes...but that’s how I know that you’ll absolutely ravage them,” Beelzebub said. “The virus tore through their corporations.”

Pestilence took his hand back from Beelzebub and cupped both of his hands to his mouth. He brought them to his lips and breathed out. There was a glow inside his hands, and when he opened them, two coins lay on one palm. Beelzebub picked them up.

“I’m glad that you had these...” Pestilence said. “I thought Heaven and Hell had ceased hostilities.”

“It was personal,” Beelzebub said. “But it negated all of the contracts that I signed. It’s good that War is on her way. Nuriel committed an act of war, and I mean to retaliate.”

Pestilence smiled, showing his perfect teeth, all the way to the very sharp canines. “Apocalypse is back on, then?”

“Oh, I think the world will continue with only two angels remaining,” Beelzebub said, mildly. “After all, what would you two do with yourselves without the humans?”

Pollution’s eyebrows went up and it looked like they were nearly willing to concede the point, when Pestilence said, “Torment the demons, I guess.”

“Sweet child,” Beelzebub said, affectionately. “We’re tormented enough, I promise you.”

**Author's Note:**

> For PancakesForAll, something lighter and fluffier!
> 
> Okay, so I did see the Lockdown short, and I'm not including it in this work. Corporations are corporations, and they have to be maintained, they can get sick and they can die. Sorry, Neil.
> 
> One of the plagues of Egypt was a storm of fire and ice. Hence Sandalphon and Nuriel.
> 
> Next chapter is going to have the ineffable husbands. I'm excited.
> 
> Comments and kudos are like coins for the boatman!


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